Dumb question: What's a yardbird?
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Dumb question: What's a yardbird?
Of course I know The Yardbirds of 60s fame, and never thought twice about their name, but this morning I was half watching an old Abbott & Costello movie and at one point Costello says to Abbott, "What am I, a yardbird?!?!" And suddenly it dawned on me I had no idea what a yardbird is - at least not by that term.
Susan
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And here I was gonna say a pink flamingo... or a tired old hippie-era gal...
anniemcu
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"You are what you do, not what you claim to believe." -Gene A. Statler
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"Olé to you, none-the-less!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
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http://www.sassafrassgrove.com
A "yardbird" is a chicken. (People used to keep them in their yards.) The term later became used for the inmate in the prison yard. It was also jazz great Charlie Parker's nickname (often shortened to "Bird"). His official website has this to say about why he was called "Yardbird":
John
Cheers,Nickname origin: There are two stories.
1. He lived "free as a bird."
2. When touring with Jay McShann, they accidentally hit a chicken (a yardbird) with their car and Parker made them stop to pick it up so he could have his landlady cook it for him.
John
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Spike: "We band of buggered."
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I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
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You mean yardbird isn't another name for a Guinea?
<img src="http://www.zijderveld.com/pics/2001%20a ... 20fowl.jpg" width=300>
<img src="http://www.zijderveld.com/pics/2001%20a ... 20fowl.jpg" width=300>
Reasonable person
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Those stories could both contain a grain of truth but, as they stand, are completely contradictory. A yardbird is an imprisoned animal and not 'free as a bird' at all. My conjecture is that the second strory is closer to the truth as regards origins and the first as regards eventual connotations.jsluder wrote:A "yardbird" is a chicken. (People used to keep them in their yards.) The term later became used for the inmate in the prison yard. It was also jazz great Charlie Parker's nickname (often shortened to "Bird"). His official website has this to say about why he was called "Yardbird":Cheers,Nickname origin: There are two stories.
1. He lived "free as a bird."
2. When touring with Jay McShann, they accidentally hit a chicken (a yardbird) with their car and Parker made them stop to pick it up so he could have his landlady cook it for him.
John
There seems to be no doubt that the nickname was originally yardbird and he himself composed and recorded a tune called Yardbird Suite in the mid 40s. (Another origins myth is that he acquired the nickname because he had a voracious appetite for fried chicken, still another that he called chickens yardbirds which his musician friends regarded as a bit quaint and hick).
Later it got shortened to 'Bird' and then acquired the contradictory connotation. He went along with it composing tunes with names like 'Bird Gets the Worm' and so on.